Louise Scruggs

Nashville, Tenn., — In memory of Louise Scruggs, the Country Music Hall of Fame^® and Museum will present an in-depth interview honoring visionary music industry executive Mary Martin on Tuesday, November 17, at 6 p. m. in the Ford Theater. The forum is free and open to the public.

The Louise Scruggs Memorial Forum, made possible by the Gibson Foundation, was established in 2007 to honor music industry leaders who can be seen as the legatees of Scruggs, the wife of Country Music Hall of Fame member Earl Scruggs and the first woman in country music to take on roles as a booker and manager. Honorees are chosen by representatives of both the Gibson Foundation and the Museum and receive final approval from the Scruggs family.

Setting new professional standards in artist management, Louise Certain Scruggs played a key role in bringing the music of Flatt & Scruggs and the Earl Scruggs Revue to audiences well beyond the traditional country norm – a role she relished until her death in 2006. A doting wife and mother accomplished in the domestic arts and as beautiful and well-dressed as any film star, Scruggs was known for her knowledge of music and music trends and better known for the formidable business acumen that helped her open or close doors in the best interests of her husband and sons.

The forum interview with pioneering artist manager-A&R executive Martin, hosted by Vice President for Museum Programs Jay Orr, will track her career story and invite her memories of the artists, songs, issues, opportunities and challenges she has met throughout a distinguished career spanning more than 40 years. The interview will be illustrated with recordings, film clips and photos from the Museum’s archives, Martin’s personal collection and other sources.

Mary Martin

A native of Toronto, Martin took her first steps into the music industry in 1962 when she moved to New York and sometimes made ends meet working as hostess at the now legendary Bitter End, which had opened the previous year and quickly evolved as a central venue in the folk music renaissance. Martin eventually became executive assistant to Albert Grossman, who managed the careers of Bob Dylan, Janis Joplin, Paul Butterfield and Peter, Paul and Mary, among others.

The cultural upheaval emblematic of the ’60s would mean that new generations of audiences wanted artists and music that reflected their concerns and values. Many of the artists these audiences embraced now rank among the cultural icons of the 20th Century. From the beginning, Martin was at the center of the revolution.

In Grossman’s employ, for example, Martin introduced Dylan to Levon Helm and her friends in a band called the Hawks, who would soon be better known as the Band, the same band that toured and recorded with Dylan as he walked (to a chorus of boos) from solo acoustic folk idol to electrified major international rock star. (The Band’s many hours of practice tapes and demos recorded with Dylan became some of the most storied bootleg recordings in history, but were not officially released until the 1975 double album The Basement Tapes.)

Following her four-year apprenticeship with Grossman, Martin took on music as a permanent calling by managing and helping to launch the enduring careers of Leonard Cohen and Van Morrison.

At the time, Cohen was already established internationally as a poet, but he had performed as a teen in a country band and had his sights set on a career in music. Following Cohen’s 1967 performance at the Newport Folk Festival, Martin helped her fellow Canadian sign to Columbia Records and his debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, was released that year. The collection included the Cohen composition “Suzanne,” which Martin had previously pitched to Judy Collins, and which had been recorded by Collins on her 1966 album In My Life, the beginnings of the Martin A&R career chapters to come. Clearly understanding writing and publishing as key revenue streams for Cohen and all her later charges, Martin also helped Cohen establish his Stranger Music Publishing Company.

From 1969 to 197l, Martin managed the fledgling solo career of Van Morrison, a singer-songwriter whose influence today is rivaled only by Dylan. Under her watch, Morrison’s Moondance became his first album to chart in the Top 100 and “Domino,” from Morrison’s 1970 release His Band and the Street Choir, hit the Top 10. Martin assisted in the renegotiation of Morrison’s Warner Bros. contract and his publishing contract. She famously got her client out of a production contract that had prevented him from accruing royalty payments on his music publishing.

In 1972, Martin was named east coast director of A&R for Warner Bros. Records. She signed Emmylou Harris, Commander Cody, Leon Redbone and Dory Previn to the label and she assisted in the signing of others. Over a period of nine years, she traveled extensively in the search for new talent and great songs. By bringing her management experience to her A&R role, she was able to further assist the label in the career development of several newer artists, most notably Harris and Bonnie Raitt.

Martin again demonstrated her impeccable taste and x-ray vision when she put her management cap back on, moved to Los Angeles, and took on the career of singer/songwriter/guitarist/producer Rodney Crowell, who had been signed to Warner Bros. in the late ’70s, but had yet to make his indelible mark on country music history. She went to work coordinating all phases of his career, working arduously with Warner Bros. to secure budget approvals and additional support for record promotion, marketing and touring in support of each release. She provided input to the booking agency in the planning of tour dates and television appearances. Martin also supervised all legal, financial and operating arrangements for Crowell-produced recordings by Rosanne Cash, Bobby Bare, Sissy Spacek, Albert Lee and Guy Clark.

In 1983, following his departure from Pure Prairie League, Martin brought her instinct for exceptional talent and tireless work ethic to the career of Vince Gill when she secured and negotiated the RCA recording contract that launched his solo career. In 1985, Joe Galante named her vice president of artists & repertoire for RCA Records, Nashville. For six years, she worked with Galante to find and sign new artists and to secure songs and producers for new recordings. Clint Black and Lorrie Morgan are among the artists signed to RCA during her tenure.

In the ’90s, Martin served as an A&R consultant to Asylum Records, Nashville, where she oversaw the production and success of Lila McCann’s first album, produced by Mark Spiro, which included the hit “Down Came a Blackbird.” From 2000-2002, as vice president of artists & repertoire at Mercury Records, Nashville, she co-produced a Hank Williams tribute album, Timeless, which won the Best Country Album Grammy Award.

In Keeping

“Mary’s story and her accomplishments are very much in keeping with Louise’s legacy,” said Earl Scruggs. “Like Mary has for her charges, Louise always looked after me and our sons not just from a strict business standpoint, but as a fan as well. She could see and understand the appeal of our music in a way that perhaps others couldn’t or wouldn’t.”

“If you look at the body of music Mary has nurtured and championed,” said Museum Director Kyle Young, “it is easy to see that it all reflects the deepest roots of American popular music, from blues and jazz to folk and country. Whether from Montreal or Belfast, Houston or Birmingham,” he said, “these are singer-songwriters informed and elated by the past who have taken the greatness of the old and successfully competed with it to create something new and authentically their own.

“Mary has always clearly understood the value of music in people’s lives and appreciated the struggle and angst of creative souls desiring to matter in the lives of strangers,” Young said, “just as Muddy Waters, Woody Guthrie, Jimmie Rodgers, or Howlin’ Wolf may have mattered in their own. Her unerring ability to see promise before it blooms as greatness, her ability to connect her aspirants to the resources they need, and her integrity and work ethic have led worldwide audiences to some of the most worthwhile music and most gifted artists of modern times.”

Founded in 2002 as the philanthropic division of Gibson Guitar, the Gibson Foundation is committed to making the world a better place for children worldwide through its own initiatives and by its support of other non-profit organizations that advance music and the arts, health and welfare, education and environmental causes. For more information, please visit GibsonFoundation.org or gibson.com.

These programs are made possible, in part, by grants from the Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission and by an agreement between the Tennessee Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Country Music Hall of Fame^® and Museum is operated by the Country Music Foundation, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964. The Museum’s mission is the preservation of the history of country and related vernacular music rooted in southern culture. With the same educational mission, the Foundation also operates CMF Records, the Museum’s Frist Library and Archive, CMF Press, Historic RCA Studio B, and Hatch Show Print.

More information about the Country Music Hall of Fame^® and Museum is available online.

– from the Country Music Hall of Fame^® and Museum